


no regrets

by niallszayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Olympics AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:43:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1208182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niallszayn/pseuds/niallszayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn and Niall meet in Sochi. An Olympics AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no regrets

**Author's Note:**

> i'm posting this in a rush, so please excuse the stupid title or any mistakes i might have made. hope you like it anyway!

One last push against the handles and Zayn was off, adrenaline rushing as quickly as his bobsleigh down the icy track. He could feel Liam breathing against his back and took a deep breath himself, gently steering the bobsleigh around the first narrow turn, this was it, this was their chance. If they nailed this run, they'd beat the Austrian team and actually place third. Third! In the Olympics! No English team had managed that in a long time.

They sped around the last corner, Zayn's heartbeat picking up. It had been a good run, they hadn't made any mistakes so far. Now all that was left to do was hope it had been enough.

Reaching the finish line, Liam and Zayn sat up, Liam working on slowing the bobsled down, both boys anxiously glancing at the time. It took him a second to realise what it said, to grasp that - YES! - they had actually made it.

Liam wrapped his arms around Zayn from behind, pulling him up and out of the sleigh, both of them laughing, hugging, slipping on the ice, tumbling all over each other.

"We made it!" he heard Liam shout, muffled through his helmet. "Zayn, we made it!"

Zayn pressed his head into Liam's shoulder, feeling incredibly and embarrassingly emotional for a second, before they were being pulled of the track for the obligatory photo and he removed the tinted plastic shielding his face, forcing himself to pull it together. No need to be remembered as the bronze-medal-winner who cried.

Sure, they'd "only" placed third, but it was his and Liam's first time at the Olympics and they'd only placed behind Canada and Russia who /always/ seemed to be up there, and they'd actually beaten Austria and all the other great teams in the competition and Zayn was just insanely happy.

A few seconds later he suddenly had an armful of Louis, as the small lad seemed to wrap his whole body around Zayn.

"Congratulations, Zayners!" he yelled, not letting go. "I knew you could do it!"

"Thanks, Lou" Zayn grinned, hugging his friend and teammate back. "Congrats to you too! Us Brits are smashin' it this year."

"Yeah well, but seventh doesn't get you a medal, does it Haz?" Louis smirked, turning towards his brakeman who let go of Liam to flip him the finger.

"Not my fault, boo-bear" Harry teased and ruffled his hair affectionately. Louis shoved him playfully and stalked off to bother Liam.

"So proud of you" Harry smiled, grabbing Zayn's face and smacking a kiss to his cheek.

"Thank you, Hazza. You did well too, seventh place at the Olympics is impressive, no matter what Lou says."

"Yeah, yeah." Harry waved his hand dismissively. "Don't try to take the spotlight off you and Li."

Zayn laughed and caught Liam's eye, his teammate gesturing for him to come talk to the journalists.

Zayn sighed. He couldn't say he particularly liked that part of being an internationally successful athlete. He was quite shy and did not enjoy talking in front of cameras and nosy people asking too personal questions.

It started out alright, with journalists from different countries asking him and Liam about their runs and win, keeping the questions strictly professional. Until eventually they ran out of questions, and of fucking course they latched straight onto the stupidest thing he'd let himself get talked into the day before.

"So Zayn", the journalist, a pretty young blonde, asked, leaning in a bit as if she knew him. "Yesterday you admitted to having a crush on another athlete here in Sochi. Care to tell us who the lucky girl is?"

Zayn fought the urge to groan and roll his eyes. He regretted admitting that deeply, but when the journalist had started asking him about the rumours that surrounded the Olympic village, mainly of a sexual nature, he'd blushed so hard that she kept digging until he'd finally admitted that there was indeed someone who had caught his eye. Damn the stupid blond hair and those stupid blue eyes and that stupid pale skin and that _stupid_ bright smile he could just not get out of his head.

He was annoyed at the very inappropriately curious questions and at himself for answering them (although at least he'd managed to fend them off before they'd make him admit who it was), and now he was annoyed at this journalist for just assuming he was talking about a girl. He hated the fact it was 2014 and people were still assuming everyone was straight instead of using gender neutral pronouns like he had made sure to.

"I don't really, to be honest" he said.

"Why? Doesn't she reciprocate the feeling?"

Liam threw her a sharp look and put his hand on Zayn's arm in a calming manner. Too late for that.

"Not that it's any of your business, but _he_ doesn't know" Zayn said through gritted teeth, making sure to put emphasis on the _he_.

"Oh" the woman said, obviously at a loss for words. Before she could do anything else, Liam had pulled Zayn away, sighing.

"Zayn..."

"I know" Zayn muttered. "That wasn't how I planned on coming out."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I guess. Ask me again once the rest of the world finds out."

"Come on, we should probably talk to someone about this, figure out if you have to do anything else, yeah?"

"Right" Zayn said, shaking his head. "Thanks Li, you're right of course."

-

Zayn had never expected to get that big of a response to his coming out. He wasn't an important personality after all, not in his book at least, just some kid who happened to be part of the most successful British bobsledding team of recent years. Apparently the whole world took his coming out as some sort of political statement, due to the timing. People thought he had planned to come out as a way to shade the Russian government and its homophobic policies. Zayn talked to his trainer and their team's publicity expert and released a statement that yes, he was indeed gay and didn't want to hide it but no, he had not intended to come out this way and during his stay in Sochi, it had been a heat of the moment thing.

Tons of people asked for interviews but he declined them all. He didn't want to turn into some sort of symbol for the LGBT community, he wanted to be recognised for his athletic accomplishments.

In the evening, Zayn was exhausted and had a headache after a day filled with celebration and stressful meetings and phone calls.

"You're still coming, right?" Louis asked him in the evening as they were about to head out to the bar they usually spend their nights at. Their quarters were in the smaller Olympic village up in the mountains, together with all the other bobsledding teams, the skiers, the luge teams - and the snowboarders.

That last one was the main reason Zayn tagged along in the end - not the fact that Louis kept reminding him he'd "won a bronze medal today, Zayn, you can't stay in on a night like this!"

He just hoped he wouldn't regret it in the morning.

"Well hello there, Mr Bronze" a familiar voice behind him said and Zayn turned around on the chair at the bar he was sitting at, not able to keep the grin off his face. "Heard you had a big day today."

"So did you apparently. Mr Gold. Congrats on that, by the way."

"Thanks. But that wasn't actually what I was talking about." The blonde sat down next to Zayn, ordering a pint in his broad Irish accent, before turning his whole body back to Zayn. "You okay?"

"Yeah" Zayn nodded, "Yes, I'm fine. Dunno why everyone's making such a big deal out of it."

"Well you did just come out on live television in a country that's been on the news for homophobia and stuff for a while now."

Zayn caught Niall's eye then and they both burst out laughing. "If you put it like that..."

They giggled for a bit, making Zayn really feel like a teenage girl - as if his racing heart and churning stomach around Niall weren't already enough.

Niall silently sipping his beer next to him gave Zayn more than enough time to focus on everything the Irishman did. The way his casual clothes hugged his body tightly, all narrow hips and broad shoulders, how his cheeks were tinted a lovely shade of pink from the harsh wind outside, how his hair - darker at the roots - looked soft and windswept and just how close their thighs and arms were like this. He could almost feel the heat radiating off him.

It had been much like this every evening since they first met, a week ago at the airport in London.

 _"Careful, Haz" Zayn said, grabbing the curly haired lad's arm as he tripped over_ something _, not a rare sight with him. Zayn would never understand how he was more graceful on the icy race track than on flat ground._

_"Thanks, Z" Harry said, hoisting his hand luggage up on his shoulder. "Lou'd kill me if I broke something now."_

_"Pretty sure the whole team would" Zayn chuckled, ruffling Harry's unruly mop of hair even more._

_A loud, boisterous laugh, unknown, yet strangely familiar made him turn around curiously._

_He quickly identified the owner of the laugh, immediately understanding why it had seemed familiar. Zayn couldn't quite hold back the smile that spread across his face as he looked at the boy standing a couple of metres away. Yes, he'd hoped he'd meet him, but he hadn't expected it to be this soon._

_He really has the bluest eyes ever, Zayn thought as said eyes suddenly fixed right on him. He only realised he'd been caught staring a couple of seconds later, when the boy quirked his eyebrow at him cheekily, and blushed beet red._

_"I didn't realise the Irish team travelled with us too" was the first thing that came to his mind. Very impressive._

_"Yeh, just got here from Dublin. You know, saving the planet and all, they didn't want to get a whole plane for the five of us." He laughed and Zayn joined in, stunned by the sheer_ brightness _. "What gave us away?"_

_"Um" Zayn made. "You, actually. I, um, recognised you."_

_"Me?"_

_"You're quite well-known among the snowboarders out there."_

_"You're not a snowboarder though. I would've remembered you."_

_Zayn blushed again, not sure what to make of that last part. "I'm not. I've just got an...interest in snowboarding." He didn't. He'd just happened to form a crush on a certain Irish snowboarder after he'd seen an interview with the only real Irish hope for a medal._

_"Oh. No need to introduce myself then?"_

_"We could still do this the proper way" Zayn suggested shyly. "I'm Zayn Malik, bobsleigh."_

_"Niall Horan, snowboard" Niall grinned and grabbed his hand in a confident handshake. "Nice to meet ya."_

_And that's how it had started._

_They hadn't sat anywhere close on the plane, but at some point Niall had shown up next to him on his way to the toilet and stopped for a quick chat. The same thing had happened the next day after the opening ceremony, Niall stopping by on his way to somewhere else, until the day after that, he'd just sat down next to Zayn and spent the whole evening with him, just like every evening after that_.

"So, Zayn..." Niall drawled, getting Zayn to snap back into the present.

"So, Niall..." Zayn imitated him when Niall didn't say anything for a while.

"I was just wondering...you said you had a crush on someone who doesn't know about it."

"Oh." Zayn's heart started racing again. He'd tried flirting with Niall, he really had, but he wasn't very good at it, so he didn't _know_ if Niall knew. He wasn't even sure if he wanted him to know. Depended on the reaction probably.

Somehow they'd both turned towards each other, so they were now sitting face to face, Niall's left knee slotted right between Zayn's knees, effectively bracketing Zayn's right one between his.

"I don't know..." Niall sounded more shy and hesitant than Zayn had ever heard him. "I guess I was kind of hoping, since you really only spend time with your teammates and me, that you weren't talking about one of your teammates."

Zayn's heart rate was alarmingly high by then, and he sucked in a sharp breath when Niall looked up into his eyes shyly.

Carefully, to give him the chance to pull away, he put his hand on Niall's knee, close enough to where Niall's hand was resting that their fingers brushed lightly. "I wasn't" he said. "Talking about my teammates, I mean."

Niall's face lit up with his smile again. "You weren't?" To Zayn's utter delight he moved his hand and entwined their fingers on top of his knee.

"No" Zayn shook his head. "I was talking about you."

"Oh? That's good" Niall said, and his eyes wandered over Zayn's face, and Zayn blushed, biting his lower lip nervously when Niall's gaze lingered there. Niall smirked and brought his right hand up, brushing his fingers lightly across Zayn's cheekbones and jaw, before settling at the nape of his neck. "Because I might have a tiny crush on you too."

"Do you, now?" Zayn asked, feeling a lot more confident suddenly. He felt the light press of Niall's hand against the back of his neck and leaned forward, catching Niall's bottom lip between his in a soft kiss. Niall sighed softly, tilting his head in just the right way and applied more pressure, deepening the kiss. Zayn's free hand came to rest on Niall's waist and he more than willingly parted his lips when Niall's tongue moved along the lower one.

When they pulled away, flushed and out of breath, Niall smiled. "Maybe a little more than just a tiny crush."

Zayn did not regret anything the next morning, not going out in the evening, not kissing Niall, not going home with Niall. He didn't regret it when he looked down at where Niall's head was resting on his chest, their naked bodies entangled under the sheets.

He didn't regret it when Niall woke up, his eyes so blue and his smile so bright, or when they took the best morning shower Zayn had taken in a very long time. Not when he kissed Niall after another successful competition he hadn't paid any attention to because he'd been too busy staring at Niall all the time, not even when the press practically ate them up afterwards, because Niall was there to hold his hand through it.

He didn't regret it when he said "I love you" for the first time and Niall said it back with shining eyes, or every time they said it after that.

He didn't regret it when they were travelling together, to competitions that one or both of them participated in, or when they moved in together, even though they fought more often, over domestic things.

He didn't regret it when Niall finally said "I do" and when he saw the look in his eyes when Zayn said it too.

And Zayn knew, Niall was the one thing he would never regret.

 

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